Ken Friedman - Short Bio

PROFESSOR KEN FRIEDMAN

Ken Friedman works at the intersection of three fields: design, management, and art. At Denmark’s Design School, he works with theory construction and comparative research methodology for design. As Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design at the Norwegian School of Management, he focuses on knowledge economy issues.

“To design effective processes and artifacts, designers must know how things work and why,” Friedman writes. “This requires constructing and testing theories. Theories are models that demonstrate how things work by describing their properties or elements in dynamic relationship. They help us to understand what happens when elements interact. Theory construction is the art of developing the theories we require for robust design practice.”

Ken Friedman has done research in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of design, and doctoral education in design. He also works with national design policy projects in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Wales.

Friedman plays an active role in developing international research networks and conferences for the design research community as editor of the journal Artifact, as book reviews editor of Design Research News, and Communications Secretary of the Design Research Society. He co-chaired the La Clusaz Conference on Doctoral Education in Design in 2000, the 2006 conference of the European Academy of Management in Oslo, and the 2006 conference of the Design Research Society in Lisbon.

Ken Friedman is also a practicing artist and designer active in the international laboratory known as Fluxus. In 2007, Loughborough University honored Friedman with the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, for outstanding contributions to design research.

source: www.defsa.org.za/2007conference/keyspeakers.html